Q&A: Birchbox Co-Founders Take Stock

Contents

PCMag: How popular has the addition of Birchbox Man been? That was about was it a year ago?HB: Yeah, it was a year ago, a little over a year ago. We celebrated a few months ago with a mini-golf tournament.KB: Our man-iversary, which is one of my favorite terms we've ever had. HB: So the cool thing about launching Birchbox Man is that we were able to launch it at scale. When we launched Birchbox for women we had to test it with 200. Our first month we only shipped 600. The Birchbox Man we were able to launch at a much bigger scale and it's been really great. What's the figure we share in terms of growth rates for Birchbox Man? It's like 20 percent month over month? KB: And for Birchbox Man, the interesting thing is that it wasn't necessarily on our immediate roadmap because obviously we have this pipeline of women. And so when we thought about the different things Birchbox could become it wasn't like the first day we started Birchbox, obvious that we would be sending men grooming products and lifestyle products. But when Birchbox was out there we heard from women that the men in their lives really wanted it. HB: They were like looking over their shoulder and being like, "Hmm "KB: "So what'd you get? What's that pink thing?" And we were like, "really?" And we kind of said let's test it. Really see if you put your money where your mouth is. So we tested it first, we did a small one-time box2011, was it? November 2011 where we created one box and basically we just wanted to see, you know, we think that the Birchbox Man is a good idea because we started doing research between hearing guys wanting it and testing it, but we wanted to know: is it for men or is it for women? And we learned by doing this test that men were actually really excited and engaged with the concept, and so that gave us a first data point and then we went on to do focus groups and surveys to find out: is it monthly? Is it quarterly? How do you feel about the different things that could be in a box?

We came up with something that is very much grooming and lifestyle. It's not more grooming or more lifestyle, it's just a balance between the two. That allows us to make the product selection really fresh. We don't have to send you a shaving cream every month because we're only really putting two or three grooming products in a box. But it also did something really special for our business, which is it allowed us in a big way to go into sampling non-consumable goods. So the concept of sampling being trying something from a brand that creates demand for something else from the brand.

So with Birchbox Man we have lifestyle products that are the end product, but brands carry other things. So a sock brand could have different styles of socks, so you get to see one and you can buy another. But you know, another accessory brand, we could give you the belt, but we could also be selling things like wallets from the brand, things like passport holders, collar stays. Now you're kind of getting a sense of 'this is the brand's aesthetic'this is the quality of the product and I can trust that other things could be equally as good.

PCMag: Last year you moved into Europe. Have you adjusted your business model at all?HB: It hasn't changed the business model but it's changed when we wake up in the morning, the communication; having four offices instead of one office is just different. But we've been really excited to see how the business model itself really does translate across borders, both for meeting the consumer demand of having a fun and efficient way to discover new products, but also our brand partners, many of them are global. They're excited that we're in these markets in Europe to help them there. And then there's also this other thing that's happening which is great for the stakeholders, consumers, and brands: we're able to bring brands across borders, so find really awesome smaller French brands, bring them to the U.S., bring U.S. brands to the U.K., so it's great.KB: That's been huge actually because we kind of learned before we actually had acquired JolieBox, which is the company that allowed us to move into Europe quickly, that consumers really were loving when we were finding brands that were hard to access. A lot of them were international brands that didn't have distribution yet in the U.S., and then on the brand side if you can imagine the difference in what it takes to launch your brand at scale if you go with a brick and mortar approach or even your own online approach versus Birchbox where suddenly you have a presence, a story, editorial, PR, all of that happens at once. Brands were like, "Oh my gosh, this is such a different experience of launching in a new market," and that is actually a huge part of what we've been focused on is that brand sharing, how do we get brands over these different borders. It's just been really a lot of learning; our general counsel is learning a lot of federal regulations.

PCMag: What do you see for the future of Birchbox?KB: To infinity! (Laughter) HB: We've got big dreams, big dreams for sure. KB: I mean, we really are motivated by what we started with, which is: how do we create the fast discovery experience for the customers? How do we connect the customers to the best products and brands to the best customers? We think there's a lot of potential for what that could mean. We feel like the beauty space is a massive thing to conquer; it's a huge industry globally, but our perspective is that lifestyle has the ability to kind of add more substance to that experience. So we love the idea of growing into more lifestyle. What we've seen in men's is that our customer loves it there, we hear from our women subscribers too that she loves it, and our perspective is that we'll create a better experience no matter even if you are really there to primarily shop for beauty. So we think that lifestyle will continue to grow as a subset of our business but we're very focused on continuing on this path with this mission of creating the best discovery experience. So that's what we're still going to be doing. Keep growing fast.

Chandra is senior features writer at PCMag.com. She got her tech journalism start at CMP/United Business Media, beginning at Electronic Buyers' News, then making her way over to TechWeb and VARBusiness.com. Chandra's happy to make a living writing, something she didn't think she could do and why she chose to major in political science at Barnard College. For her tech tweets, it's ChanSteele.
More »